This is going to be complicated as and ADHD.

[Imsuchamess]

DS age 8 is being investigated for aspergers and ADHD. I am having a great deal of trouble with his behaviour and would appreciate some help.

Problem area one. My son is prone to to violent and aggressive outbursts. During which he will hit kick and bite me and my other dc. I try to do time out but he doesn't even seem to hear me and continues with the hitting kicking and biting.

Problem area two. My DS seems to lack empathy in certain ways. He does not lack empathy completely and in some circumstances shows more empathy than you would expect a child his age to show. But a example of his lacking empathy (I don't know if I should even call it that but for lack of a better word) is if he hits his sisters and I try to get him to understand why he mustn't hit them he is incapable of seeing things from their point of view. The only reason he can see for why he shouldn't hit is sisters is because he will be sent upstairs and his iPad time will be reduced. He cannot grasp that he shouldn't hit his sisters because he is going to hurt them.

Problem area three we do star charts however my son is too focused on the reward. He pays little attention to the things he has to do in order to get the reward and sees them as unimportant all he cares about is the reward.

Problem area four. If my son does something good and I praise him for it he immidiately asks what his reward will be. I obviously cannot give a reward for every little thing he does good. But he then gets exasperated that there is not going to be a reward and in future won't do the good behaviour as he sees little point in doing so as he will only get a word of praise from me.

Problem area five. If I put something on the star chart which is a problem area for example do not hit your sisters. He will try and do as the star chart says. Eventually meaning this stops becoming a problem but as he grows the things he has problems with changes so we change it on the star chart. But as soon as there is no reward for not hitting his sisters he reverts back to hitting them.

Our star chart system has ten problem areas (that he is struggling with at that particular time) on it and every star he gets we give three pence for so if he gets all his stars at the end of the week he is given £2.10.

Please help me.

My two are AS but no ADHD, however, we have some of the same problems.

For hitting we try and have zero tolerance. We used to come down hard typically escalating the situation. We then tried a keeping safe approach but no punishment but had continued incidents. What seems to be working at the moment for ds2 is a seemingly, ridiculously small penalty e.g. 5 minutes off TV if he hits us or his brother. He is able to tolerate this in a way he couldn't longer sanctions but it still tells him he has crossed the line. We also wait until he has calmed down to implement this. This seems to have reduced the incidents (on the other hand it might just be that he is beginning to settle down at his new school).

No great advice about the reward thing as ds2 too has an irritating habit of asking "what's in it for me" to any request. I wonder if working on ten things at the same time is too many - perhaps prioritise and choose the totally unacceptable things to work on. I am quite shocked at the things I now tolerate (such as swearing) but there was a phase when I seemed to spend all day telling them off and I don't think that is a good thing either.

I don't have any experience of AS but my DS has ADHD. I would agree that having 10 problem areas on the go at once is too many. At the moment we are working on just 2 areas, with football stickers awarded for this achievement. my DS like yours, is never satisfied, but like you say you can't be handing out rewards for every little good thing he does, although obviously you acknowledge it with praise etc. If my DS thinks there is a chance he can get more than what he should, he will go on and on. I just ignore, don't debate it, and just walk away until he stops going on, but he can be insatiable.
Just as a further point we reward for these 'good ' behaviours at home even if the day at school has been a different story. So for example last week he was in trouble for hitting another child last week, but we still gave him stickers at home for not hitting his brother as I think it's important not to punish twice, if the matter has been dealt with at school, then we just try and move on.
Also DS is now 10 and is really only just beginning to look abit more empathetic or genuinely sorry if he does something. at one time he never looked remotely bothered, so may be your kid will mature a bit in that respect as he gets older.
HTH

Thanks all you have given me a lot to think about. Polter I will look over those links you have given. Thanks for your input everyone.

Marking place for the links As we have some of the same problems as the op. Dd climbing onme ATM so can't look through them!

Polter has some great links which saves me from C&Ping them!

DS1 has ASD and ADHD and a lot of the same difficulties. I do have a few stock responses that I trawl out when his logic and reasoning are all over the place. I also don't punish, because it doesn't work. I'll comment on each area in turn

1. Rather than punishing with time out, focus on having a calming space. Bean bags, big blanket, piles of cushions.... something he can wrap himself in to self soothe, or pound to work out aggression, without causing any injury.

1. DS1 has this attitude to his brother. I often say to him, in response "so you wouldn't mind if I let DS2 hit you/break your things/block your view of the tv...." He reply is of course he would, but that's different, but I can use that to remind him to treat other how he would like to be treated.

1. Limit their use for things that really matter and not day in day out.

1. I emphasise that rewards can be intrinsic. "what do I deserve for doing this?" "my gratitude." "what do I get for trying this?" "the satisfaction of having been brave enough to try something new."

1. See 3. Reserve the star charts for short periods of tackling a particular problem and not for day in, day out. They rapidly lose their novelty factor. If you use them for occasional specific purposes, you can make the stakes much higher. The only big success we've had with them is getting DS1 clean and dry. That was for big money, but worth it. And the rewards were for tiny, achievable tasks and steps within the process of attaining full continence and were faded as he moved onto the next stage.

That said, he'll be getting extra pocket money over the holidays for not constantly being shitty with being kind to and tolerant of his brother.

Thank you ouvre very helpful.

We've been doing the incredible 5 point scale with ds.

It's really helped him to identify how he's feeling, and now knows that at a level 1 and 2 he's fine, at a three he needs to find something to distract himself to calm down (we're still at the stage where he needs a lot of help at this stage), at 4 and 5, which is the time when violence starts, he is taken upstairs.
Apparently he'll get to the stage where he'll take himself up, we're not quite there yet.

Attacks from him have gone down from 4 or 5 a week to 1 or 2 a fortnight.

We have a star chart which is tackling getting to school and doing his spellings.
I agree with Polter that not being violent shouldn't be rewarded. That's where the 5 point scale is helping us, but I know other people try different strategies.